Spiffy:

Iffy:

Still at least a year out; level design needs a little work; interior levels are very dark.

StarCraft: Ghost was a game originally being developed for the Atari 2600. OK, not really. Sometimes it does feel that long, though. The troubled history of the game includes two developer switches, culminating in the eventual selection of the talented Swingin' Ape Studios. It also includes radical surgery on almost every aspect of the game, from the basic premise to the control scheme, to the junking of almost the entire code base. The good news is, it looks like Nova has finally come out of her long, dark tunnel. There's still a while to go in the development process, but based on my hands-on demonstration of the game at this year's GenCon Indianapolis, it looks like this Ghost might finally see the light of day.

"Nothing," was the response from a Blizzard representative when I picked up the controller to begin my hands-on tour of the game. The question I had asked was about how much of the original game is still left in the current version of StarCraft: Ghost. "Really?" I replied. The response was affirmative. Apparently, when Swingin' Ape received the work done by former developer Nihilistic, it basically looked at what had been done and decided to junk the entire thing -- that's everything down to art assets, code base, even the game's storyline. All that was left was the game's basic premise: a first-person stealth-action game starring one of the Terran Militia's special ops cadre -- a Ghost.

The rebuilding process for Ghost began with the storyline. In the version that was delivered to Ape, there was absolutely no crossover with the classic PC RTS game beyond the basic details of the setting. Apparently, thinking it was crazy to not completely utilize the fantastic IP it was privy to, Swingin' Ape has re-worked the storyline to tie it more closely to the RTS games. The time frame of the game now takes place just after the conclusion of StarCraft: Brood War. There will also be some crossover with the storyline of the original game, though they hasten to add that one doesn't need to have played the PC games to appreciate the story. Several characters from the PC games will also make an appearance. The Blizzard rep refused to tell me who would be showing up, but did say, "I bet you can guess."

The story begins with a run-of-the-mill Zerg infestation of a vespene mining facility on Mar Sara. A large detachment of human Marines are dispatched to take care of the facility. Things aren't what they seem, however, as this particular Zerg installation has a lot of Zerg protecting it -- way too many for an ordinary resource harvester, who quickly overrun the Marines. A special-ops Ghost, Nova, is sent in to find out what happened. What she finds is a new resource, Terrazine gas, that's being harvested in order to turn Ghosts into a sort of super-agent, called a Specter. Unfortunately, Terrazine has the nasty habit of attracting both Protoss and lots and lots of Zerg, both of whom have their own reasons for wanting the Terrazine. Nova will have to get to the bottom of this mystery before well, let's just say before bad things happen.